When Will Winter End
by YunaChie
Summary: After finding himself stranded on the side of an abandoned road, Raphael fights against a harsh snowstorm to get himself and his brothers to safety.


The first thing Raphael noticed when he gained control of his senses was that the air was a little bit more colder than usual. Also, he had a splitting headache that had been reunited with him a few moments after his waking. Once he finally managed to gain the courage to open his eyes, he was met with a bleak patch of snowflakes falling onto his face.

Raph raised his arm and brushed the snowflakes off. However, as soon as he did so, the snowflakes seemed like they started flying in at a faster rate than before; as for he was met with yet another faceful of white fluff. He groaned and instead pushed himself off of whatever he was residing on, and opted to surveying his current surroundings.

He was standing on what seemed to be part of a broken-off road; there was snow piled up everywhere, and multiple cracks and holes were drilled into the tar. It looked abandoned, like a road you'd find if you were driven off of the side of a real road.

 _Wait a minute..._ Raphael thought. _How did I even get here? And what even is this place?_

Raph stood up to his full height and surveyed the rest of his surroundings before stepping out into the unknown, determined to get some background on wherever he'd ended up at. He tried to recall the events prior to his awakening, only to find they were in vain as for his headache was disturbing his ability to even think straight.

It was getting colder by the second. Like, extremely cold.

 _Hopefully I have enough energy to get out of here._

* * *

After a good ten minutes or so of searching the rubble he'd woken up in, Raph had concluded that nobody else had landed down there with him. Once it was deemed safe enough to leave, he wandered away from the broken pieces of road and down the path that hopefully led somewhere.

He thought about his brothers. Raph wondered if they were alright; and he wished that they weren't trapped somewhere out in this bleak snow. He wasn't entirely worried about Leonardo; his blue-banded brother held his head quite high and would be able to slip out of the situation hopefully unscathed. However, the same could not be said for his other two younger brothers. Michelangelo was just like a kid; he would probably either sit it out and wait or gather the courage to search for his older brothers, which both could possibly lead to a bad ending whether if he was injured or not. Mikey had the tendency to be clumsy, and on top of that he wasn't all that bright about finding his way out of situations like these alone. Although, it was good that his youngest brother at least had a bright and hopeful personality. Maybe that would've helped him to pull through, if he was in such a situation.

Donatello, his second youngest brother, would no doubtfully be able to manage his own way out of a mysterious place. With his intelligent mind and highly futuristic technology, he bet his purple-banded brother would be able to figure out a way out of this place in no time. However, it wasn't Donnie's state of mind that Raph was worried about; it was his physical state of being. If such a minor injury that was inflicted on his younger brother's shell could cause chaos, Raph concluded, then even 15 minutes in freezing cold weather with snow flying everywhere could possibly lead to a fatal end. Raphael didn't want to think about that. He hoped Donnie's Battleshell would be able to last cold temperatures.

As Raph trudged throughout the barren landscape, he felt like he was walking in circles. The road seemed like it just went on for miles, and every time he passed a corner it would get longer. _Where even was he?_

Raphael's headache was starting to loosen down, so much to the point where he could clear his thoughts and think straight again. A little minor detail he didn't notice before, though, was that he was limping on his right leg. _Huh._ Raph made a mental note to see Donatello about it as soon as he got out of here.

* * *

Raph swore it had been hours when he finally approached a change in the landscape, although it probably had only been about a good twenty minutes. He rounded the corner of the barren roadway, and saw a pile of what seemed to be rubble off in the distance. Raph kept walking, and was able to come close enough to the pile to figure out what it was.

As soon as he took a good look at it, however, his heart rate sped up a little. _Oh shell._ He took a good look over it again, which only confirmed his suspicions. It was that...what did Donnie call it, the Turtle Tank? Yeah, that. Except it was in smaller pieces. _A lot_ of smaller pieces. Raphael quickly rushed over to the pile of rubble, now believing that his brothers had also fallen down the valley.

"Leon!" He shouted, beginning to peel apart at the piles of broken metal. "Mikey! _Are any of you out there?!_ "

His panic filled speech did not get any response, and that only made Raph dig deeper. He pushed aside mountains full of seemingly endless pieces of debris, and when he reached the bottom with none of his brothers in view, Raphael called out to them again. This time, he shouted louder; in which he also swore he could hear someone groaning nearby.

"Hello? Is anybody there?" Raph began moving towards the source of the painful sounds, and once he located the spot it was coming from, he began peeling away at the rubble that was above what he was searching for. Or rather, _who_ he was searching for. Once he reached the bottom, he couldn't believe his eyes.

" _Mikey!_ " Raphael gasped and immediately went to work at digging his youngest brother out. "Ar-...are you okay?!" He watched as his brother cracked open an eye in response.

"R-Raph...?"

"Yeah, it's me. Don't worry, I'll get you out of there."

A few minutes of silence passed as Mikey's labored breaths filled the cold air, and soon enough Raph had freed the younger turtle and placed him securely in his arms. Mikey nudged closer into the source of warmth, and sighed as Raph gently stroked his forehead.

"R-Raph, what happened...to..?"

Raphael looked at his youngest brother as Mikey asked his question. He stayed silent for a moment as he pulled Michelangelo slightly closer to him, hoping his brother wasn't freezing to death.

"...I don't know, bro. I dunno."

Mikey turned to look his oldest brother straight in the eyes. His face contorted to one of straight confusion, to which Raph responded back with also an equal amount of confusion.

"I...I thought L-Leon lead you back to me? He set out a 'hile ago...said he was gunna' get help for Don n' me n' find you..." Mikey's speech was slurring a little. Raph sighed worriedly, knowing this was not a good sign. He took in his youngest brother's words, and his face suddenly shifted from confusion to a look of pure worry with a slight bit of terror mixed within.

"Wait... _he left_? Which direction did he go in, Mikey?"

Michelangelo responded to him by pointing his finger towards the right side of Raphael, the path that which Raph had just come from. Raph tightened his grip on Mikey and stood up all the way, taking off slowly in that direction. However, he stopped when Mikey gently tugged on his mask.

"Wait, Raph..." Michelangelo sighed tiredly. "...We can't just l-leave Dee 'ere."

Raph's face slowly turned into a look of realization, then one into worry again. "Oh, right." He turned back towards the pile of strewn out rubble. "Do you...do you know where he is, Mikey? Is he okay?"

Mikey slowly lifted his arm again, and pointed towards a certain part of the rubble. "...O'er ther', I think...he was speakin' to us not too long ago, but t-then I think he might've passed out..."

Raph looked to the pile of scraps, and then back at Mikey. He didn't know what to do; as for if he set Mikey down and dug through a bunch of rubble to free his trapped brother, there was the possibility that Mikey could freeze a little too much if he took too long, but then again, his second youngest brother was probably already on his way to a frozen hell as they spoke. So, either way he was going to free Donnie.

 _Screw it._ Raph walked over to an enclosed part of the rubble. _Mikey will be alright if I hurry._

"Mikey? I'm gonna set you down now, okay..."

Raphael didn't need to finish his sentence for Mikey to nod and sympathetically touch his oldest brother's shoulder. Raph gently lowered Mikey into the spot of the rubble, and hurriedly ran over to the pile Mikey was pointing at. He immediately began peeling away at the layers upon layers of metal and such, hoping that Donatello was, in fact, in the spot Mikey had directed him to.

Every second that he was throwing scrap metal left and right, the cold seemed to get even colder than before. If he was lucky, Raph concluded, he'd at least have a couple hours to get to safety before they all froze completely.

However, once he reached the bottom of the pit of rubble, he wished he had longer to get out of this place. There was no way he'd be able to get both of his youngest brothers to safety in time, with their injuries. Raphael dived into the cave he made during his search for Donnie, and went to work at freeing his other younger brother.

" _Donnie!_ Oh, sh-" Raphael hurridly moved all of the metal blocking him from grabbing the younger turtle. As he scanned over the entirety of what he could see of his brother's body, he concluded that Donatello was probably the least likely out of all of them to get out alive.

Raph hoped that whatever was left of the youngest's Battleshell would last them through their trek through the roads.


End file.
